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Impact Of Obesity On The Health And Development Of Children And Adolescents

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Impact on Health/Development Obesity has a profound impact on the health and development of children and adolescents. There are immediate and long term health risks, such as, asthma, sleep apnea, orthopedic complications, acid reflux, cardiovascular disease and insulin resistant type 2 diabetes. Severely obese adolescents can suffer serious morbidity. In fact, there are few organs systems that obesity does not affect. Of equal concern, are the teasing, discrimination, and bullying of obese adolescents (Must, 2011). While treatments such as behavioral and lifestyle modifications may work for the majority of children affected by obesity and help them increase their health, there are adolescents affected by severe obesity that require more aggressive treatment such as bariatric surgery (Aaron S. Kelly, Sarah E. Barlow, Goutham Rao, Thomas H. Inge, Laura L. Hayman, Julia Steinberger, Elaine M. Urbina, Linda J Ewing, and Stephen R. Daniels 2013). Pediatric Population Affected Adolescents that belong to minority ethnic groups such as African American, American Indian and Hispanic/Latino have the greatest risk factor of being obese. Also children, who do not get adequate physical activity, have unhealthy eating habits, low socioeconomic status, sometimes genetics or a combination of all these factors. Obesity threatens the health and welfare of millions of children and adolescents, particularly the estimated 4%-7% of youth who are considered severely obese (Inge et al, 2013).

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